Eating // Just finished an amazing pizza with heirloom tomatoes, fresh mozzarella drizzled with a balsamic reduction. It’s kind of like caprese salad as a pizza.

Drinking // Chardonnay but earlier today I had an amazing German Beer – Augustiner Bräu Edelstoff was so good that we left the pub and went to the bottle shop in town that carried it to buy more You have to figure that a brewery that has been in business since 1328 knows what they’re doing.

Reading // I continued my comics and graphic novels binge from vacation into this week. My plan now is to focus on reading The Forsaken by Ace Atkins.

The Forsaken by Ace Atkins

I enjoy his Quinn Colson series and once I finish this I’ll only have the recently released The Redeemers to be caught up.

It’s a lot of fun to see all the different interpretations of the same coloring page every week. I did a little happydance earlier this week when the artist liked my coloring of one of her drawings.

Recovering From// It was a ridiculously hot day watching the Red Bull Flugtag event. It’s a fun event in which teams try to get their flying machines to actually fly before crashing headfirst into the river. We didn’t stay long because it was just too darn hot out there. It turns out that the Coast Guard shut down the event not long after we left because the spectator boats in the river were interfering with commercial traffic. It was pretty darn crowded on the river.

Promoting // Bout of Books 14 is coming up August 17-23. You know you want to join in.

Exercising // Getting back to rowing after a week of vacation was brutal but when I set a new 10k personal best yesterday I was pretty happy.

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http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/104639202/0/whimpulsive~Weekend-Update-The-Saturday-Evening-Edition/feed/1http://whimpulsive.net/2015/08/01/august-photo-a-day-challenges-2/August Photo a Day Challengeshttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/104494136/0/whimpulsive~August-Photo-a-Day-Challenges/
http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/104494136/0/whimpulsive~August-Photo-a-Day-Challenges/#commentsSat, 01 Aug 2015 15:00:00 +0000http://whimpulsive.net/?p=51835August Photo a Day Challenges I have found a way to mak […]

No single photo a day prompt list fully works for me. I choose to save several lists and choose one prompt each day from among those lists. I’m happy to say that I love this approach and it works great for me. I highly recommend it.

Here is a sample of the photo a day lists I’ll be using for August:
(click on the images to see larger versions)

If committing to a month at a time feels like too much then Chantelle at Fat Mum Slim may have the answer for you. For 2015 she is using weekly lists of prompts. That way if you feel like you lost track or have lost the oomph you have a new starting point each and every week.

I have also discovered another source of inspiration for those days when nothing on the lists inspires me. There are several Instagram accounts that feature a new theme every week. I follow these accounts and every once in a while they save me when I just don’t like any of the other prompts. These are all worth following on Instagram.

If you’re not doing a Photo a Day challenge I hope you’ll consider it because it’s a fun way to have a photo journal. If you are, great! Keep up with it. You won’t be sorry. I highly recommend the pick from many prompts each day approach.

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July was all about the graphic novels and comic collections for me. I just wasn’t in that much of a mood for anything else. It was a busy month of family events and vacation so my reading time was in short random intervals. I ended up having a great month of reading and enjoyed my binge quite a bit.

I usually list a favorite in each category but since I only read one novel, one non-fiction, and one audiobook that’s kind of pointless. As for the comics and graphic novels I really enjoyed them all so let’s just call the month of July an all around win for reading.

Bone Volumes 5 through 9 plus a couple of extras makes for a long post. You have been warned.

One nice thing about taking a vacation in which you drive to your destination is that you can take a giant pile of library books with you. As I mentioned before we left on vacation I was purposely planning on reading mostly comic collections and graphic novels on this trip and that turned out to be a perfect plan. I read a bunch of books on my TBR list and still had plenty of time to stop and stare at the ocean.

I finished up the remaining 5 volumes of Jeff Smith’s outstanding Bone series. So I’m just going to wrap this all up in one post. I really could wrap it up in a couple of sentences. This series is wonderful. If you haven’t read it you have missed out.

(Note: publication dates are for the reissued colored Scholastic editions.)

These were the essentially the second half of the series. It’s a mix of fantasy, adventure, magic, and humor, along with tinges of politics, romance and revenge. While marketed and shelved as juvenile fiction these are absolutely just as much fun and perhaps more for adults.

After finishing the completely satisfying final volume I picked up the companion volume the Bone Handbook. It contains summaries of each of the 9 books. There are character profiles of most of the major cast. Be warned, however that you don’t want to read these before you’ve finished the series because they do talk about the entirety of the story. It has a fun little extra comic story. I enjoyed the bit of background history about the places and characters that talked about things that happened before the beginning of the series. I really enjoyed the interviews with the author and the artist who did the colorization of the Scholastic editions. All in all it was a fun follow up to the series and I’m glad I read it.

Next up were a couple of additional books that aren’t part of the main storyline of Bone. Rose is a prequel about events that took place long before the beginnings of Volume 1 of Bone. The artwork by Charles Vess is different from what Jeff Smith has done in the rest of the series but for a prequel it works. It was good to get more of the history after finishing the main series.

Tall Tales is a follow up collection of stories written by Jeff Smith and Tom Sniegoski. This one delves into a bit of history of Boneville and the Bone cousins (which may or may not be accurate). As with the rest of the series, it was simply fun and entertaining.

Seriously, if you haven’t read these, you should.

This is a series that I want to own and I plan to purchase them so I can read them again and get The Hubster to read them too. In the meantime there is a spinoff trilogy of prose novels with illustrations called Quest for the Spark written by Tom Sniegoski who worked with Smith on Tall Tales. My library has them and they’re on my wish list.

The Book:
This volume 5 is a compilation of issues 16-20 of the comic series.

From the publisher:

When an agent dies in the field, it’s their fellow spies that are always hit the hardest. When the agent that doesn’t make it home is an ex-lover, “hard” doesn’t begin to describe it. As Tara Chace and the rest of the department reel over the demise of one of their own, a ghost from Director Paul Crocker’s past has him sending his Minders into danger yet again. But will this operation free Crocker from his ghosts or merely create new ones?

My Thoughts:
I really thought this story arc was well done. When one of the agents under Paul Crocker dies, the entire unit is affected. At the same time events in the country of Georgia have the intelligence communities in Europe on edge. In particular, Paul Crocker is affected because there is a connection to a case he handled in his early days as an agent.

The life of a spy is never an easy one but it’s worse when fellow agents die.

Tara Chace is put in a difficult situation by her boss and things do not go well.

As usual with this series, each new story arc is illustrated by a different artist. While not my least favorite so far, I was not enthusiastic about Carla Speed McNeil’s in this one. I’m fine with characters looking different than in previous volumes because of a different artist. My issue with this volume was that the three of the main male characters (and a few of the secondary characters) looked far too much alike. I often had to use cues from the dialog to figure out which of them was in the particular panel I was reading.

This was one of the better volumes in this series in terms of story but one of the weaker in terms of artwork.

As I’ve said before, if you’re a fan of Homeland and/or The Americans you should check out this series.

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We spent last week on vacation on the Oregon Coast and it was glorious. We’ve been going to the same place for a week every summer for nine years. I think this was the best ever week in terms of weather. It was simply spectacular.

Some of these are repeats if we’re linked on Instagram or Facebook but I love them so I’m posting them here too.

The place we stay has an amazing cove right off the back deck. The waves are an ever changing view. This year I played with the slow motion video on my phone and was so happy with the results. Wait for the second wave on this one. Trust me, it’s worth it.

Thor’s Well is a place on the coast where a deep hole in the rocks fills and drains when the tide is high enough. I’ve been wanting to see (and photograph) this for a few years. This time the timing and the tide worked out perfectly. I’m so glad I finally got there. This is definitely something we’ll do again. (go to the full screen view for this one)

Greg Rucka’s fan-favorite P.I. is back on the case in this new hardcover! When one of investigator Dex Parios’s dearest friends is brutalized following a Portland Timbers match, Dex is determined to get to the bottom of the attack no matter who stands in her way! Join Eisner Award-winner Rucka and new series artist Justin Greenwood (Image Comics’ THE FUSE) as Dex kicks more than just soccer balls in her pursuit of the assailant.

My Thoughts:
I really enjoy this series featuring Portland P.I. Dex Parios. She’s the classic tough yet vulnerable heroine. Greg Rucka is very open about the TV show Rockford Files being a major influence on his work in this series. I enjoy that feel to the series and I love that it’s set in Portland.

I was a little concerned when I heard about the artist change with this volume and that Justin Greenwood doesn’t live in Portland. He’s done a magnificent job however, of maintaining the feel of the city and recreating familiar landmarks and neighborhoods of Portland in his art. There is naturally a bit of change in how characters are drawn but he’s stayed true to the Dex (and other characters) that I’ve become familiar with in the earlier volumes.

This story arc is wrapped around the soccer crazed world of the Portland Timbers and their fans. It’s got some good pieces about the Portland vs. Seattle rivalry. It was fun so see something I’m so familiar with become part of a story like this.

I liked the way that Rucka surprised me with some hints and insights into Dex’s history and I’m hoping that we’ll be seeing a volume four in the near future.

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This is technically a weekly meme but I don’t read fast enough to make that worthwhile so I post it every other week.

Finished in Print

After the Armistice Ball by Catriona McPherson

This is the first in a series featuring a well to do woman in 1920’s Scotland. I enjoyed it enough to plan on reading the next in the series but I’m not convinced it’s a ‘must read’ series for me.

The League of Regrettable Superheroes by Jon Morris

This was just a whole bunch of fun. It’s jam packed with pop culture trivia and comics history from the 1930’s to the 1980’s. It’s also hilarious. If you’re a fan of obscure useless information, get your hands on this book.

Started in Print

The Forsaken by Ace Atkins

This is the fourth book in the Quinn Colson series. Quinn is one of my favorite mystery series heroes. He’s a bit like Jack Reacher (if Reacher actually liked one or two people).

Finished on Audio

Death at Victoria Dock by Kerry Greenwood

This on is also set in the 1920’s but in Australia. It’s the fourth in the Phryne Fisher series. Phryne is unconentional and ahead of her time and I adore her.

Started on Audio

Portrait in Death by J.D Robb

J.D Robb’s Eve Dallas series has long been a guilty pleasure of mine. This is the first time I’ve tried the audio format and I am so glad I did. I am really enjoying Susan Ericksen’s narration. She’s doing a great job of distinct voice characterizations without being over the top about it. I may never go back to print for this series.